We've got two different topics here lol. Thought I'd address the "god" topic in a different post. When I came into AA, I didn't believe in anything. I had been constantly searching for something to believe in, but couldn't pick anything. I couldn't believe in a god who punished, like the what I had grown up with (catholic). I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. For awhile I had dappled in wicca but it was too structured, so then I considered myself pagan, believing in nature, or saying that I did....but I couldn't see how a tree was going to get me sober. Then I started working with a sponsor on the steps and she suggested that I call other sober women and see what their concept of a "higher power" was...it was then that I realized that they all had different concepts of a higher power, and that meant that I could custom build my own as well. I was so desparate to stop drinking that I decided that I would act "as if" and pray...to what I didn't know and still don't. Sometimes I think that my higher power or god as I call it because that seems to be the universal term for whatever it is, sometimes I think it's simply my conscience, the part of me that knows what the right answer is. Is it an all knowing entity? How am I to know? So sometimes I simply think it's the part of me that knows what the right course of action to take is. Sometimes I get a "feeling" to turn down a certain street instead of taking my normal route. It could be that I avoided an accident, it could just mean that I felt like going down that one route. I don't know. I don't know if there's really a higher power guiding my decisions. What I do is turn over any difficult decision or whatever to whatever...my conscience, a higher power...whatever. Just like I don't know why I'm an alcoholic whether it be hereditary or not, just like I can't see electricity but I know my lights go on when I flip the switch so I just trust it, just like I don't know why someone dies at 23...it just is. So I turn over my life every day to whatever, because it's worked for going on 21 months. I finally accepted that just because I don't understand why something works, doesn't mean I can't believe it. Like the fact that I'm not a physicist so I don't understand things that physicists understand, but I believe it when I see an airplane flying (is that even physics? lol...) LIfe is a mystery, everything is a mystery, the next 5 minutes is a mystery....will I win my match in my 8 ball league tonight? I don't know....will I stay sober tomorrow? I'm pretty sure I will but I don't know....will I die next week? I don't know...there's so much I can't know until it happens, will I find out if there's a god when I die? I don't know. Can I be willing to believe that there is? Sure, and most times I do, but like I said, sometimes I think it's just my conscience. I'm rambeling....but that's how it worked for me, the willingness to believe filled the void of alcohol, not the belief itself, because I'd be lying if I said I fully belived.